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“Coitus Infrequentus” Rating: NC-17…..oo la la!
***************** T’Pol checked her latest messages on the computer as she appreciatively sipped her tea. Trip had given her the small, self-heating teakettle as a gift three days ago. Though heating elements were frowned upon in crew quarters, Trip had said he figured that all the open flames in theirs made it a moot point. And now she didn’t have to wait to go to the mess hall for her morning brew. She swiftly scanned through several standard reports from various ship departments and a request from Ensign Sato for assistance in calibrating the updates to the latest version of the UT. T’Pol was on medical leave for two weeks: standard procedure for a maternity case—and protesting to Phlox that she had barely been pregnant for a few hours had done no good. However, the UT calibrations would hardly tax her physically—and besides, she had been experiencing an illogical feeling of insanity over the last couple of days: sitting in her quarters with nothing to think about except stocking up on three times the normal amount of baby paraphernalia. And of course, this was only whenever she wasn’t actually visiting the babies and being bombarded by incidental guests and well-wishers. To say that the past few days had been taxing would be a colossal understatement. T’Pol reconsidered her physician’s wisdom in restricting her activities as she mulled over her recent existence. The door hissed open as she was formulating a quick positive response to Hoshi. Finishing up, she turned in her chair to greet her mate, as he entered their small, communal living space. “Hey, sweetie,” Trip said tiredly, as he paused next to the front door, one hand on the wall, and used his toes to pry his boots off one at a time. “Hello, pumpkin,” T’Pol gravely greeted him in return. “What number is that one?” Trip asked with interest, struggling to get his left boot off. “Twenty-seven,” T’Pol replied rather pessimistically, after a moment’s thought. Their project of studying human pet names—and the Vulcan response to same—was intriguing, but she doubted they would eventually settle on any that she could live with. Nicknames were bad enough, even though she’d become used to Trip’s. Pet names? Why couldn’t humans just call a spade a spade? Not even noticing her unconscious mental use of Trip’s human colloquialism, it happened so regularly now, she rose from her chair to kiss him hello; but Trip put up a warning hand. “Hold on now, I just got off a twelve-hour shift. Y’probably don’t want to come too close.” T’Pol paused in serious consideration of his caution, and then resolutely decided to risk it. Simply avoiding the use of her nose, she stepped up and kissed him. As usually happened, the embrace lasted three times longer than either had expected it to, and T’Pol finally broke it—breathless since she wasn’t inhaling nasally. She trusted Trip’s assessment of his own noxious condition and she wasn’t about to sample his odour up close until he’d had a thorough shower. Nasal numbing-agents were a thing of the past for her now…she had grown quite used to the unique scent of humans all about her. But a double shift was something else entirely. “Shower,” Trip said in wry agreement; and, squeezing her hands, he made his way into the bathroom. T’Pol picked up a PADD she’d been reading earlier that day and sat on the floor to continue. A primer on newborn care. She had just finished the chapter on diapering, which frankly, appeared hardly the challenge all humans seemed to think it was. This was good: as they were going to have such an illogically unsettling number of the things to deal with. The next chapter detailed the various techniques of swaddling. Though T’Pol could see the logic behind the idea of replicating the confines of the womb, she read along in deepening disbelief—the idea of tightly wrapping a baby up like a cigar striking her as extremely odd. By the time she’d thoroughly absorbed the infant straightjacketing procedure, Trip had emerged from the steamy bathroom, briskly towelling his hair. In the six days since he’d moved into her quarters, Trip had become completely at home, and often surprised her by walking around nude, as he got dressed or undressed. Not that she minded the sight of him; however, it was extremely rare that she glimpsed anyone unclothed except herself. And so it was still more than somewhat startling to glance up and find herself in the presence of her friend and colleague Trip, minus his uniform. She got to her feet. Trip could feel her body’s sudden, self-surprised desire at the sight of him; and smiling, he came forward and wrapped his arms around her, dropping his towel on the bed. T’Pol closed her eyes, returning Trip’s quiet hug strongly. The hot, damp skin of his freshly-showered chest pressed against her cheek, and she inhaled his clean smell deeply. She couldn’t believe that only a few short years ago, she had bleakly wondered how she was going to make it the few days she’d been assigned to the human ship. Her career on Earth had always been helped by her reliance upon nasal numbing-agents to allow her to mingle freely with the odorific humans: and so she’d stocked up in readiness. However, after several months within the close atmosphere of Enterprise, she had noticed that she was forgetting to take it when it wore off. And after she got to know one particular human’s body with an intimacy she’d never even had with herself, she grew to appreciate the distinctly different aromas of their two species. She wondered suddenly, as she stood against Trip, if the humans around her noted her odour as different. Body odour, like personal finance, abortion opinions, and certain dessert recipes, were some of the random conversational subjects the human culture had labelled taboo, and so it was unlikely anyone would have mentioned it to her in passing. At this thought, Trip started sniffing her neck and along underneath her jawline as if searching for something. She tried not to let the ticklish nature of his attentions cause her to involuntarily giggle, and lost much dignity when she failed. Trip smiled down at her chagrined face, his arms still firmly around her back. “It’s kind of a woodsy smell,” he finally decided aloud. “Like grass and leaves. Except,” he sniffed her hair deeply for a moment. “Except your hair. That’s kind of…” he sniffed tastingly, “minty, almost.” “That is my shampoo,” she informed him. “Ensign Sato suggested it. Formula sixty-three alpha.” “Ah,” Trip agreed, sniffing again with his eyes closed. “I thought I recognised it.” “You’ve been smelling Ensign Sato’s hair?” T’Pol inquired archly and with a somewhat severe mien. “Not on purpose,” Trip protested lightly. “It just kind of wafts around.” T’Pol narrowed her eyes at him. Trip could sense that she was pulling his leg, mostly. But he could see that there was also a vague filmy remembrance in the back of her psyche that recalled the hellish hours he and Hoshi had spent, slowly dying together in decon, while T’Pol had been trapped outside, unable to help. Who knew what confidences and sentiments they’d shared in those last hours before they’d slipped away? Instead of dragging her faint doubt out into the bright open, however, Trip was able to simply drape a filmy thought of his own around her semi-conscious one and reassure her of his strong feelings. He reflected how much more efficient and effective this method was over the clumsy use of words, as he watched her slightly troubled face smooth back into contentment, tinged with the beginnings of desire. “Anyhow,” Trip said aloud, as if they’d been conversing all along, “Hoshi kinda scares me. She’s a black belt. She could probably kick my ass.” “I could probably kick your ass,” T’Pol replied in her low voice, gently scratching her fingernails down Trip’s bare back. “That’s true,” Trip allowed in a thoughtful sort of way, trying not to shiver at the gooseflesh she was raising on his arms and neck. “But you were born that way. Hoshi spent years training for it. I dunno. I just wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley.” “Good,” T’Pol replied, her eyebrow cleanly marking the end of the one-word sentence. Delighted, Trip grinned. He still hadn’t let her go, and he leaned down to speak quietly into her deliciously pointed ear. “Y’sound jealous. Not very Vulcany of you.” “It must simply be your inherent human jealousy bleeding through,” she replied over his shoulder—in a business-like tone that was belied by her gently stroking hands and quickening heartbeat. “Ah. Bleedthrough. I see,” Trip said, rubbing her back through the fabric of her clothing. “And so is that why I’m so aroused all of a sudden?” “Probably,” T’Pol said without thinking, and she butted her face hard against his neck for a moment, wondering inwardly at the strange, strong sensations that she had never properly experienced before in her life—and which had been gripping her stomach and her throat mercilessly over the last few days. “I missed you today,” Trip said almost silently into her hair. It didn’t matter. Touching this closely, she could hear his to-be-spoken words as his mind formed them. Speaking aloud was just habit. And he could hear her mind’s instant reply of almost startled agreement. She wasn’t used to missing things. Wasn’t used to labelling it as such when she did. Trip laughed quietly and tipped her face back a little. At the look in T’Pol’s eyes he paused, the smile falling from his lips like water. And they finally gave in, pressing their mouths together hungrily, pulling gently but insistently at one another’s shoulders and cheeks and necks. Trip only surfaced as T’Pol started to nudge him innocently in the direction of the bed. He pulled back and gazed down into her stormy face. “Phlox is expecting us.” She didn’t trust herself to answer, and so her mouth merely twitched in frustration as she looked up at him. She was new to these feelings—and even newer to indulging them—and once they manifested, there was only one sure route to extinguishing them. That…or this: holding on to them like a fistful of tugging kites in a hot, dry wind. As always, Trip marvelled at the strength of her odd, alien, Vulcan emotions. What about a quickie? he suggested somewhat humorously. What’s a qu…oh. T’Pol immediately educated herself as to the import of his comment through various thoughts and images connected to it in his mind. Her cheeks greened with partly logical, partly self-indulgent sensation. And they were in a hurry after all. Taking three steps, she crossed the small room, knelt, and leaned over the wide, low, padded box that served as a bench. Deftly, she reached between her legs and parted her form-fitting uniform via the concealed zipper she used to access the washroom facilities. Trip swallowed in total shock at the sight of her and the erotic tug of her mind pulling him down to her. He had been kidding mostly, and the sudden presentation of her willing opening, spread further by her own helping hands, caught his breath excruciatingly in his chest. A sudden erection agonized into existence, and he fell heavily to his knees and pushed himself into her. Both gasped deeply at the electric shock of sensation that caught them unprepared and sent them straining furiously against one another. It was too much. An instant later they both cried out as their bodies short-circuited into explosive release. And for another moment or two, they held back the loudest of their moans and simply clung to one another, trembling. Finally, they slumped together across the top of the bench, Trip leaning heavily over her and breathing raggedly against the back of her neck. They rested as long as they dared, and finally Trip elicited another double gasp by pulling away from her. He stroked a hand down her uniform-clad back as he stood, and left her kneeling on the floor, breathing hard, her head and arms still bowed over the bench top. After a minute, she refastened her clothing, and pushed herself rather tremblingly up onto the bench to sit and watch him get dressed in a fresh uniform. “An extremely…efficacious method,” she finally murmured in approval. “Extremely,” Trip laughed in agreement, sitting on the bed and fastening his boots. He then rose and offered T’Pol a hand to stand up. Pulling her to her feet and into his arms in one smooth motion, he kissed her for a moment rather passionately. Let’s go see our kids, he thought. * * * Phlox noted in delight the excellent tracking capabilities of the smallest child’s pupils and made a few deft notes on his PADD. He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet, reminiscing about his youthful days as a runner and wondering if his knees would last one lap of his alma mater track anymore. As he straightened, the door darkened, and the two parents of his strange group of charges entered the alcove where the tank still resided—albeit in brighter light now than when the children had first been born. Trip approached in amazement, as he did every time he visited after a few hours away. “They just grow so fast!” he exclaimed, bending and tapping the curved glass—as if the aquarium was full of tetra fish instead of a bunch of hybrid humanoids. One of his daughters pursed her lips and blinked devastatingly at him. His heart melted, and he sank into his customary chair. T’Pol noted the shocking strength of the affectionate hold the children already had over Trip—and if she was honest with herself—over her as well. It seemed most illogical to possess such sharp feelings for people she’d only just met; however, the evolutionary advantage was clear. It had been the same with Elizabeth. And so she allowed herself to be drowned alive alongside her mate—as she hungrily examined her children and made sure that each was as fit and healthy as they had seemed the last time she’d sat with them. Their tiny, inquisitive minds were quite adept now at swimming around the empty sickbay: gambolling off to examine the simplistic, existence-oriented brains of the dung beetles in Phlox’s cages, or to bounce against the unresponsive, squashy turnip that was the mind of their physician—before butting up against Trip and T’Pol’s psyches again like little goats. “They are outgrowing their habitat,” Phlox informed the two parents with pride. His nutritional supplements and the cutting-edge radiation/steroid therapy he was inventing as they went along were certainly agreeing with his littlest patients, and his tone was duly vibrant with professional and paternal pride. Phlox’s inability to save Elizabeth had been an especially terrible failure for him, and the fact that her siblings were now thriving under his care was a balm for that old wound. “So what’d’we do now?” Trip asked, looking up at the doctor from his seat. “We take them out,” Phlox replied as simplistically as if he were announcing that their potato patch was ready. “And where do we put them?” T’Pol asked next, with a lacquered tolerance that betrayed her impatience with his glib manner. “Ah, well, I believe their pulmonary systems have developed enough that they should be quite adept at breathing the air of sickbay on their own. I have prepared three bassinets. However,” he said, holding up a finger, “they should stay here for another few days.” Neither Trip nor T’Pol commented on the other one’s vast, silent relief at the fact that they still had a few days’ sanity left—before the madness would descend. “And, uh, when d’you want to get ‘em out of the tank?” Trip asked. “Right now, if you like,” Phlox replied nonchalantly, causing both his crewmates’ eyes to widen in unexpected shock. Before either had a chance to answer, Jonathan Archer’s voice floated from the main room. “Hello? Anyone around?” “I’ll be right back,” Phlox added, and bustled out to see what the captain needed. “Whew,” Trip said quietly, looking over at T’Pol. “You ready for this?” “Not in the slightest,” T’Pol answered, having no ability to put together one of the falsely-encouraging non-replies that a human would give. Trip laughed at this and looked back at his amphibious kids. “Good. I’d hate to think I was the only one.” “We have faced worse,” T’Pol considered aloud. This was true, and did not count as a false platitude. “That is a fact,” Trip agreed, leaning back in his chair, gazing at the tank, and trying to imagine how bad three newborns could possibly be. “We have faced much worse.” His son was mouthing his big sister’s heel as she crammed it into his face. Neither seemed to mind. “We should speak with the captain,” T’Pol said suddenly. She was relieved that Archer had appeared in Sickbay of his own volition, thus saving her the uncomfortable trip up to the bridge to meet with him in his ready room, as she had planned to do today. The silent, staring eyes of her well-meaning crewmates—and the irritating flurries of whispers and gestures that commenced as soon as they thought she was out of hearing—were starting to wear her infinite Vulcan patience thin. Trip stood and gave her a hand out of her chair: an unconscious, protective chivalry had developed for her over the last few days. And though she certainly had no need of it, T’Pol sensed that it was extremely good for both of them that she quietly accepted it. They entered the main area of Sickbay to find Phlox briefing the captain on the latest medical news aboard ship. Archer turned at the approach of his two officers and smiled. “Congratulations again. Sounds like everyone’s doing great,” he said with genuine good cheer. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of these two going through another baby-related tragedy together. It was just too awful. “Thanks, Cap’n,” Trip said, equally gladly, and pulling T’Pol close with a momentarily bold arm around her waist. “So how’s parenthood treating you?” Archer asked next. “Thus far, it has been uncomplicated,” T’Pol replied, her placid tone ironically foreshadowing what they all knew was to come. “Oh, good,” the captain laughed humorously. But his tone sobered quickly. “I put the calls in for you to Starfleet Command yesterday. Someone should be contacting each of you today to discuss the, uh…situation.” He himself was on tenterhooks to find out what plans his two top officers would make for their future, and the future of their new family. Though he was relieved that everything had turned out mostly okay, Jonathan Archer was devastated at the sudden turn of events that was robbing Enterprise of two of her best people. He knew he would never replace them properly. Petulantly, he didn’t want to. But a starship would not function for long without a science officer or chief engineer. Archer already hated the green mistakes his new chief engineer would make. He pre-emptively loathed the oversights his new science officer would commit. It made him grumpy every time he thought about it, and he fairly pitied the people who would have to try and fill the shoes left behind by these two legends. But before he could properly worry any of that, he had to get one thing out of the way. “T’Pol, would you mind…” he turned and gestured that she should follow him. She glanced up at Trip and then separated herself from his side and followed. Once she and the captain were a little distance away from the others, Archer stopped and turned to her. “We haven’t had much chance to talk since the storm. How are you doing?” he asked with genuine solicitude. “I’m fine,” she replied, with as much calm self-sufficiency as she’d ever shown. Archer regarded her critically for a moment. She met his gaze quietly. There was hardly any way to tell with this woman—but he had seen enough over the last five years to understand that there were powerful emotions buried behind those impenetrable eyes and superbly dispassionate brows. “I wanted to apologise for…shouting the way I did…before you two went outside the other day,” Archer said, finally getting to the thing that had been bothering him mercilessly for the last week. “It was way out of line, pregnant or not. You two risked your lives and single-handedly made it possible for us to escape the storm. And I want to say thank you.” “There is no need for thanks or apology,” T’Pol reminded him calmly. “We were merely doing our duty.” Archer shook his head at her self-effacing, Vulcan tone. “Yeah, I know, but kamikaze missions aren’t exactly part of your job description.” “Kamikaze,” she repeated, as if tasting the unfamiliar word. Her head tilted slightly as if listening to a faraway sound. “A Japanese suicide-pilot from the 1940’s.” She blinked, considering. “The term hardly describes Commander Tucker or myself—but I believe I understand what you are saying.” Archer’s eyes flicked over to Trip, who was engaged in conversation with Phlox across the room. “You’re really…in each other’s heads.” It wasn’t a question, more of a marveling. “Sometimes,” T’Pol allowed. “It depends.” The exact echo of Trip’s words—when he’d discussed their bond a week ago—gave Archer pause. He remembered the slight banter there had been over T’Pol’s reticence to use the imaging chamber. He wondered if Trip had been joking or not about her overhearing. He decided to be forthright. “And while I’m apologizing for things, I may as well say that we certainly didn’t mean anything by the…conversation…we had when you were sleeping the other day. It’s none of my business, anyway…about how they got you in there. I just remembered before, when you didn’t want to, and I was curious…and…and…you…have no idea…what I’m talking about,” Archer finally finished—as he realised T’Pol had been blinking at him in interested incomprehension throughout the last few sentences. “No.” She lifted her brows blandly. “However, I wouldn’t concern myself if I were you.” It was an acceptance of his apology in any case, and Archer breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, thanks, T’Pol,” he said. “I appreciate it.” “You are welcome,” she replied generously. But then she stopped, and a slight frown creased her brow as scraps of half-recorded memory floated past her mind’s eye. Though her deadpan face and voice betrayed nothing, she looked up at Archer with a strange, shrewd gleam in her eye, and she inquired with mild interest: “What is a ‘Reese’s piece’?”
* * * Trip watched the captain and T’Pol conversing quietly across the room. He didn’t really feel like listening in, and he leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed. He looked to Phlox, who was busily correlating his latest batch of notes with his main files at the computer terminal they both stood next to. “Are you all right Commander?” Phlox inquired nasally, not looking up from his work. Trip sighed, as he leaned heavily against his ship, and watched T’Pol. She stood with her back to him across the room: her graceful poise contrasting with Archer’s emphatic gestures, as the captain spoke and she patiently listened. “I’m great,” Trip finally replied honestly. “I mean….I’m great.” Phlox nodded, still busy with his PADD and computer terminal. There was a moment of silence and then: “Do you remember,” Trip asked reflectively, “when I was…I was standing right over there,” he pointed with one hand, “that one time. And I asked you what I was going to do.” He paused and swallowed, remembering the black despair he had felt during those weeks surrounding the Columbia transfer. “‘What the hell am I going to do?’, I said.” His voice sounded faraway as he looked back in time. Trip smiled as he shook his head, marveling at the relatively uncomplicated life of the angst-ridden past-fellow he used to be. “Ah,” Phlox said in his mellow voice. “I believe an appropriate phrase here would be ‘be careful what you wish for’, hmm?” But he looked up and smiled a strange small stretchy smile as he said it—as he knew quite well that Trip had finally got everything he had ever wanted, albeit perhaps a little quicker than he might have expected. “Huh,” Trip replied, silently appreciating the doctor’s excellent grasp of human colloquialisms. And how. “But, no,” he clarified. “I’m glad I wished for this.” Then he stopped and thought about how that sounded. “I mean not this specifically,” he amended, “…no one would ever think up a scenario like this, let alone believe it actually happened. But—y’know what I mean.” “I do,” Phlox said. “I have many children of my own. And not every one was timed to mesh perfectly with the events of my life.” The doctor looked down momentarily, as if picturing them in his mind. “But I wouldn’t change a single thing about any one of them.” Trip nodded quietly at this, and lapsed into thought as Phlox finished up his work. He only had a moment to himself, however, as the captain soon approached, slightly red-faced and bemused. T’Pol was busying herself at a terminal across the room: likely mutinously catching up on bridge work right under the doctor’s nose. “How you holding up?” Archer asked, before Trip could say anything about anything. (Archer needn’t have worried: his chief engineer had been embroiled in nostalgic recollection for the past few minutes and hadn’t noticed a thing that had been said.) “Pretty good,” Trip replied honestly. “Pretty good.” So far, he and T’Pol were nicely on the mend—in many ways. “And how’s the fame treating you? I hear you guys’ve had a pretty steady stream of visitors.” At this, Trip slowly rubbed his face with both hands, thinking of the various squealish, huggy interactions he and T’Pol had endured over the last few days. “But,” he added, finally crossing his arms (as if burying his face had been a few introductory sentences) “actually, the gossip was derailed pretty quickly. And as to the visits, each comes bearing some specific, necessary piece of baby equipment I never even knew existed, so…y’know…it’s not all bad.” He yawned hugely as he finished his sentence and winced as he felt his jaw-joint crackle loudly in his ear. “Really?” Archer inquired interestedly, of Trip’s first remark. “Derailed? By what?” “That saucy little giggle right at the end of your speech,” Trip enlightened his superior blandly, examining the toe of his right boot from afar, as he leaned against the wall. It looked like a tiny crack was starting to form at one end of the deep crease made by his constantly bending toes. Damn. He hated getting new boots. “I, uh—” Archer laughed a little in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Trip lifted his foot rather dexterously to his knee, to inspect the worn spot. “Yeah, and when I downloaded it for T’Pol to listen to, I noticed that the audio file had been trimmed by 0.9 seconds. Laugh wasn’t there anymore.” Yep, a little piece of kevlarex was sticking up, right there. Trip bent and scratched at it with his thumbnail to see if it was a real hole or just a little hangnail. “See? You imagined it,” Archer replied, after watching Trip pick at his footwear for a second. “You had just been through an ordeal. I mean, it’s understandable.” “The edit had Hoshi’s login, too,” Trip said with vague, preoccupied mystification, as he really went to work on his boot—making sure that this hangnail—or tear—if it was a tear—wasn’t compromising the level-seven safety rating his footwear required. Much as he really, really hated getting new boots, he didn’t want a rip in his shoe if there was a toxic spill in Engineering. As he scraped, he mused: “Now I wonder why Hoshi would have bothered to go and shave 0.9 seconds off a history-making speech like that?” He really did sound like he was just wondering aloud. It was a very nice piece of acting, even if he did think so himself. “You’re crazy,” Archer maintained, with accompanying sounds of total disbelief. He kept glancing distractedly at Trip’s boot, which now had a largish triangle of material torn back from the man’s tugging and picking. “Yeah, we’ll see,” Trip agreed neutrally, as he glimpsed his sock. Dammit. New boots. He let his foot drop back to the floor, his knee joint protesting silently at the unceremonious twisting and holding. “Hundred bucks?” he suggested innocently, as if he was offering to repair an EPS conduit, or some other such totally appropriate thing. Normally, Jonathan Archer wasn’t one to back down from a wager with a good friend. Even if he was bound to lose. He paused though, considering how Hoshi—always a betting girl—would view being bet upon. “I, uh, better not,” he finally muttered. He didn’t elaborate, hoping that it would seem that it was merely his captain’s sense of professionalism keeping him at bay—rather than the flashing black eyes and lethal black belt of his delicate-seeming comm officer. At this, Trip grinned. “Uh-huh,” he replied, implying everything and saying nothing. “Get yourself some new boots,” Archer suddenly ordered. “Yes, sir,” Trip replied with good-natured obedience. The captain glared at him in utter defeat, before he turned and made his way to the main doors. “Make sure he gets some new boots,” he repeated grumpily as he passed T’Pol. His chief engineer was worse about new boots than she was about medical scans. “I will,” she affirmed seriously, looking up from her work. Archer nodded at her, still frowning, and departed for the bridge. * * * Phlox turned to the two nervous parents next to him. Both had donned medical gloves and were standing there as if waiting to learn how to cook soufflé. “I replicated this tool to lift them out,” Phlox said, holding up a soft, long-handled silicone net. It looked stiffish and strong, but flexible enough to be gentle. “Sim caused quite a tidal wave,” he chuckled in fond recollection. Trip thought the tool looked like a little fish net, and this association brought to mind faint, pleasant memories of fishing off the coast of Florida—and all the smells, tools, stickinesses, scales, and activities thereto. T’Pol shuddered violently. “Are you all right, Commander?” Phlox asked curiously, looking up from final adjustments upon the tank’s control panel. “She’s fine,” Trip answered for her, as she pressed her lips together and flared her perceptive nostrils at an imaginary fish odour. “I’m just not allowed to go fishing anymore,” he clarified, somewhat obscurely. He actually minded a lot less than he’d have thought. With T’Pol’s mental environment so thoroughly-marinated into his own, the idea of hooking a thirty-year-old sea creature in the face and beating it over the head until it was dead—and then cooking and eating its flesh—somehow had lost its charm. Phlox, never a man of much ceremony, dismissed the non-sequitur, and was already fishing around in the top of the tank with his net, thus instantly distracting the other two from their tangential piscean musings. Deftly wiggling the soft utensil around the topmost girl’s small body, the doctor slowly lifted her, dripping, up into the world of sickbay. His right hand made a few rapid, blind commands on the control panel, and her umbilical cord was released from the clamp marrying it to the machinery keeping her alive for the past week. With a smooth up-and-over motion, Phlox finally lifted the small girl away from the tank and to the surface before which they all stood. Warm white towels thickly padded the large, slightly concave table, and Phlox gently laid the first of the triplets, on her back and still partly within her fishnet. She scrunched her face, thoroughly horrified at the unheard-of turn of events. Her dark hair was plastered to her clean skull, her legs kicked alternately and squeamishly—and T’Pol unconsciously gripped Trip’s hand, as they got this first proper glimpse of their firstborn (secondborn) child, without the distortion of a thick glass barrier. Phlox immediately used his infinitely gentle, gloved hands to pick the tiny infant up off her back and turn her over. Trip reflexively returned T’Pol’s fingercrush—harder than a human woman would have liked—as he watched the doctor handle this miniscule, breakable-looking person as easily as he would have one of his toads or medical scanners. To Trip’s uninitiated eyes, the tiny newborn looked curved and underdone—hunched and vulnerable like a little old man—as the physician tilted her at a head-downward angle and massaged her back to help her expel the liquid from her lungs. After a second or two that felt like ten minutes, she made a infinitesimal, little-person smacking sound—like honey coming unstuck from the roof of one’s mouth—and a minuscule, pretend-sounding cry issued from her mouth. Phlox expertly flipped her back over (causing T’Pol’s hand to unconsciously tighten further, grinding Trip’s third and fourth metacarpal bones together) and laid the baby softly on her back again upon the heated towels. Her cry intensified as she got the hang of it, and it soon became a cycling series of disgruntled bleats—as she twisted slightly and strongly on the bedding and gimped her clenched fists and feet about. Her long, ropy umbilical cord grew out of her tiny, stretched navel: thick and white and still-pulsating, and trailing away across the towels. “My, my,” Phlox said indulgently as he performed a basic initial exam, and suctioned some excess mucus away from her throat with a beam-directed vaporizer. “You are a feisty one.” “Is she?” Trip asked breathlessly, “I mean, is she okay?” His heart fluttered for some strange reason as he took in her tiny pointed ears. It was hard to tell—since she was still in the throes of a strident gripe at the indignity of being born—but she looked a lot like her older sister, Elizabeth. “I’ll need to run some detailed scans, of course,” Phlox replied, as he bent her legs and stimulated the bottoms of her feet, “but so far, she seems to be rather perfect. Quite a bit smaller than a full-term infant on Vulcan or Earth, of course; but I made certain her systems are mature, and that’s what matters most. We’ll be keeping a very close eye on all of them right now.” He turned, one hand on the baby’s stomach, and poked around on his tray for an instrument. “She behaves much more like a two-week-old than a newborn,” he observed interestedly, as he found what he was looking for. “Having not had the confined womb, or the trauma of a long birthing process, she’s quite active, as you can see.” Neither of the parents had seen newborns up close before, and had to take his word for it, as they gazed and gazed at the miniature person before them in stark wonder. T’Pol finally reached out a tentative gloved hand and touched a tiny foot. “She has toenails,” she whispered to Trip in awe, not noticing the illogic of her statement. The baby’s mind intensified like a light to her parents’ perception as soon as T’Pol touched her. Phlox hated to distract the new family, but they weren’t even half done yet. He cleared his throat and proffered the tool he’d picked up a moment ago. “I believe, on Mr. Tucker’s homeworld, it is customary for the parent to cut the umbilical cord?” “Uh, yeah,” Trip said, still staring at his child. He made no move to take the laser scalpel, but nudged T’Pol minutely with his elbow. She took it mutely and with large eyes. Phlox had already clamped the cord one centimetre above the baby’s navel, and then again one centimetre past that. He indicated that T’Pol should cut the cord between the two plastic clips. She looked as intense as she did in the middle of an attack on the ship. Gently but firmly laying her hand upon the warm, taut, wiggly abdomen of her child, she held the cord steady between her fingers and quickly zipped it in two with the microscopic phaser fire of the medical tool. A brief whiff of seared flesh wafted past and was gone. The second clip on the long remnant of cord prevented much more than a drop or two of blood spilling back out of the life-giving arteries that ran its length. But Trip was startled at the sight of it. “She’s got green blood,” he said, pointing at the stain on the white towel. “She does indeed,” Phlox affirmed. “So does the boy. The Vulcan gene coding for blood-type seems, from my calculations, likely to dominate over the human one in at least three out of four cases.” “The third child has hemoglobic blood?” T’Pol asked. “Yes, your other daughter is as red-blooded as her father,” Phlox confirmed, adroitly wrapping the firstborn of the Tucker litter in a warmed receiving blanket. He passed the tightly swaddled bundle to T’Pol, and as she received it—slightly panicked—she realized the wisdom of the baby-binding. The frighteningly weak little creature had been all tucked up in a tight, warm cocoon of flannelette, and was now holdable by even the most novice of mothers. She settled the bundle in her arms and set about learning the new little face by heart: her own face looking like it might break, as she blinked down at her calming infant. Meanwhile Trip was watching in fascination as Phlox gently dipped the second child upward with his soft ladle and plucked it, dripping, from its warm tub. The baby’s tiny face was twisted with an identical registered stamp of shock to his sister’s. He couldn’t remember ever having been so put out. The whole episode with being put in the tank in the first place was already wiped from his soft, unripe memory, and he was most cross at this sudden, unprecedented turn of events. He was smaller than the first baby, but he was more robust, and he cried lustily once he had air enough to do so. Phlox went through the whole procedure again: draining the fluid from the boy’s lungs, checking him all over to ascertain good health, and then clamping his cord with two new clips. He handed the scalpel to Trip, who took it with slight trepidation. Reminding himself that he used various versions of this tool every single day, he managed to steady his hand and sever his son’s connection with the fetal world. Phlox lifted the child onto a new receiving blanket and went through the motions of tucking him compactly into it. Trip gazed down at the rather grotesque, severed ends of the babies’ two abandoned cords. Dark red blood was indeed oozing in minute quantity from the short bit extending past the clamp. Though he could hardly entertain a ‘doubt’ as to where these children came from, it was somehow still extremely overwhelming to see the scarlet blood of his son’s undeniable human ancestry fuzzing into the terrytowel surface and blotting into the silver-dollar-sized emerald spot that was right next to it. He turned his head to look at the mother of his many children. T’Pol, unmindful of a tear on her cheek, was holding her eldest daughter with instinctively expert arms, cooing and bending her face closely, and absently lulling girl with a soft, rhythmic walking motion as if she’d been doing it for years. “Commander?” Phlox prompted gently, distracting Trip from the strangely beautiful sight of a Vulcan woman silently crying with happiness over her new baby. As he turned to Phlox, he found himself being handed the swaddled bundle that was his firstborn son. For one terrified moment, Trip felt as if he had no idea how to grip the thing, but he soon succumbed to the soothing logic of the fact that he wouldn’t drop it if it was a power coil, why should he suddenly fly to pieces simply because it was absolutely the tiniest person he’d ever seen in all his long years? Trip stared in near-incomprehension at this microscopically small being who had just been delivered into his care and upbringing. Though the boy had the slightly puffy, slightly lizard-like features of the brandnewborn, Trip could see that his son was likely to resemble him to a shocking degree. The mouth and nose were bang-on copies of his own. The eyes were harder to decide about. He lowered his nose to sniff at the child’s forehead and marveled at his babysmell. T’Pol, noticing that the third child was ready for scooping, turned and placed the baby she held into one of the waiting bassinettes and stepped back up to assist Phlox with her other daughter. The process was becoming almost routine now, as Phlox retrieved the dripping baby and assisted it to breathe on its own. He allowed T’Pol to cut the last umbilical cord and wrapped the child up. He passed the girl to her mother, and immediately began the process of tidying up his operational site, leaving the new family to introduce themselves. There would be plenty of time to get them all into the imaging chamber later on. T’Pol received the infant without trepidation this time, and as she settled the baby girl into the crook of her arm and tucked the blanket down away from her little chin, she got her first proper look at the baby whose face had been the most hidden by her siblings. Unlike her noisy brother and sister, the girl was as calm and collected as if she did this birthing business for a living. She blinked softly with her glazed eyes and focused slowly on T’Pol’s face, as her mother gazed downwards at her. Using her right hand, T’Pol traced faint brow ridges above the girl’s eyes. She was startled: the trait hadn’t appeared in her family for generations. But sure enough—two tiny ridges caused the girl’s eyebrows to ride slightly proud upon her forehead, and two more ridges formed a sound suggestion of a V on the front of the forehead proper. And yet her ears were as round as Trip’s. T’Pol glanced over at her still-entranced mate, cooing at his son, and then back down at her youngest daughter. Something about this girl’s face was—troubling. It was arranged in a pleasing enough way: the ridges blending prettily with her features as they did upon the brows and foreheads of six percent of the Vulcan population. But it was something about the particular set of her wide eyes, the tilt of her baby nose, that was illogically causing T’Pol’s stomach to squeeze in a painful and distressing way. Trip glanced up finally from his son’s face to see T’Pol scrutinizing their third baby, and he walked closer so that he could look at the girl and show T’Pol their son. However, as he approached, he detected a look of sudden, panicked pain on her face, and when he touched her arm, she jumped and looked up at him with stormy, disturbed eyes. Trip felt as though cold water were splashing his insides. “What is it?” he asked urgently. Something was wrong, and his overwhelmed brain couldn’t make it out of her swirling thoughts. “It’s Gracie,” T’Pol said, a faint horror dulling her bewildered voice. “She looks like Gracie.” “Who?” Trip asked, mystified and alarmed. T’Pol was shaking like a leaf, and she put the baby carefully into the second bassinette. She took a step back, holding her arms and shivering and looking at her two daughters. “T’Pol,” Trip tried again, adjusting his suddenly-whimpering son. “Who is Gracie?” Hugging her stomach, her hands fists, T’Pol looked at him with haunted eyes. And her voice was as thin and caught as a spider’s web, as she replied: “She was my sister.” |
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